God & Country

Pew Survey: Democrats' Faith-friendly Image Suffers, While Obama's Fares Better

December 1, 2009 RSS Feed Print

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Americans view the Democrats as less religion friendly now than they did a year ago, while President Obama's administration is seen to be warmer toward religious faith than its party is, according to a new survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Twenty nine percent of Americans say Democrats are friendly toward religion, compared to 38 percent who said that last year, according to the survey.

Thirty seven percent say the Obama administration is friendly toward religion, though it's unclear how that compares to previous views because Pew didn't ask the question last year.

Twenty two percent see the Dems as unfriendly toward religion, up from 15 percent last year, while a 39 percent plurality say the party is neutral toward religion. Just 12 percent of Americans say Obama is unfriendly toward religion, the same proportion that say the Republican Party is unfriendly toward religion.

Roughly half of Americans, say the GOP is friendly toward religion, while 29 percent say it's neutral.

The erosion of the Dems' hard won faith-friendly image to levels seen after the 2004 election spells trouble for the many Democratic lawmakers elected from red states and districts since 2006 in places like Indiana, Ohio, and the Carolinas. "Views of the Democrats' stance toward religion have soured sharply among groups that were already inclined to view the Democratic Party negatively, such as Republicans and white evangelical Protestants," according to the Pew analysis. "But they have also turned more negative among both independents as well as Democrats who are ideologically moderate or conservative."

Check out this chart from the survey:

These numbers raise the stakes for how the Democrats handle abortion coverage in healthcare reform. If they enact legislation that's seen to support abortion with federal dollars, the Dems' faith-friendly image will probably suffer even more.

Read the Pew report here.

Tags:
religion,
democratic party,
Barack Obama

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The Democratic Party has in essense declared war against the people of faith.

The Obama adminstration continues to divide Americans by imposing his redefinition of marriage over the objections of people of religious faith.

Obama & the Democratic Party continues to push their extreme abortion policies against the common sense morals of middle America.

Obama pushes for ENDA to hamstring religious organizations who want to practice their faith.

Obama denies America's Christian foundations & heritage.'

For public relations purposes, the Democratic Party uses a few left-wing religious radicals as advisors so that they won't appear so secular humanistic. But that does not fool anyone.

B.O. of CA 1:12AM December 06, 2009

"Roughly half of Americans, say the GOP is friendly toward religion, while 29 percent say it's neutral."

If by "friendly" we mean "Eager to exploit religious bigotry in any form for political gain and to shovel as much of the taxpayers' money as possible to various Religious Right hucksters and hate mongers" then the roughly half are correct and the 29% apparently don't read much.

Mandy Cat of CO 10:27AM December 02, 2009

I guess we should ask ourselves what it means to be "friendly to religion". I don't see the current state of the GOP, with their deep-rooted fears of the Islamic faith, as being very friendly to religion. This fear is a main element driving these Christians to vote for further war in Muslim bastions. Because of anti-Western passages in the Koran, they have grown to believe that ALL Muslims want nothing more than to eliminate all but their own in their quest to take over the world. It's paranoia at it's finest coupled with a blind spot to their own religious texts, which speak of killing every man, woman, and child before finally wiping out all of their livestock (Sam. 15). In Judges the text speaks provocatively of genocide toward those who do not follow the commandments from their god.

The best thing a politician could do when trying to be "friendly" toward religion, is to accept the person's faith as being personal to the individual, and leaving them alone so they could practice it in peace. Unfortunately, this poll stinks of people who are disenchanted with our 1st Amendment's Wall of Separation, and will tag a politician with being unfriendly to religion because they refuse to break Constitutional law. They are upset because they want our nation to follow only their views based solely off of their religious texts. They have no tolerance for other religious views, and cannot see that the politician, by remaining mute on the subject, or by upholding the law, they remain friendly to all religions.

Mudfishin of IL 9:48AM December 02, 2009

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Dan Gilgoff covers religion for U.S. News & World Report. He is the author of The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are Winning the Culture War, and is a former politics editor at beliefnet. E-mail Dan at godandcountry@usnews.com.

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